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[[Image:TrentRNin2009.jpg|thumb|right|<small>Trent Reznor, founder of 301px|Nine Inch Nails]]'''Nine Inch Nails''' is the studio name for (photography credits: [[Trent ReznorRob Sheridan]]'s one man band. Nine Inch Nails are the most succsesfull Industrial Band around.  [[Nine Inch Nails]], often abbreviated to NIN, is an American industrial rock project, founded in 1988 by [[Trent Reznor]] in Cleveland, Ohio. As its main producer, singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, [[Trent Reznor|ReznorTamar Levine)]] is the only official member of [[Nine Inch Nails]] and remains solely responsible for its direction. NIN's music straddles a wide range of genres, while retaining a characteristic sound using electronic instruments and processing. After recording a new album, Reznor usually assembles a live band to perform with him. The touring band features a revolving lineup that often rearranges songs to fit a live setting. On stage, NIN often employs visual elements to accompany performances, which frequently include light shows. Underground music audiences warmly received Nine Inch Nails in its early years. Reznor produced several highly influential records in the 1990s that achieved widespread popularity; many Nine Inch Nails songs became radio hits, two NIN recordings won Grammy Awards, and the band has sold over 20 million albums worldwide, with 10.5 million sales certified in the US alone. In 1997, Reznor appeared in Time magazine's list of the year's most influential people, and Spin magazine described him as "the most vital artist in music." In 2004, Rolling Stone placed Nine Inch Nails at 94 on its list of the 100 greatest artists of all time. Despite this acclaim, the band has had several feuds with the corporate side of the recording industry. In 2007, these corporate entanglements resulted in Reznor announcing that Nine Inch Nails would split from its label and release future material independently. Since 1989, Nine Inch Nails has made eight major studio releases. The most recent releases, Ghosts I–IV and The Slip, both released in 2008, were released under Creative Commons licenses. Both were initially released digitally, with physical releases coming later. The digital release of The Slip was made available completely free of charge. NIN has been nominated for twelve Grammy Awards and won twice for the songs "Wish" and "Happiness in Slavery", in 1992 and 1995 respectively. ==Early Yers==In 1987, Trent Reznor played keyboards with a Cleveland band called the Exotic Birds, then managed by John Malm, Jr. Reznor and Malm became friends, and when Reznor left the Exotic Birds to work on music of his own, Malm informally became his manager. At the time Reznor was employed as an assistant engineer and janitor at Right Track Studios, and asked studio owner Bart Koster for permission to record some demos of his own material for free during unused studio time. Koster agreed, commenting that it cost him "just a little wear on [his] tape heads While assembling these, the earliest Nine Inch Nails recordings, Reznor was unable to find a band that could articulate the material as he desired. Instead, inspired by Prince, Reznor played all the instruments except drums himself. This role remains Reznor's on most of the band's studio recordings, though he has occasionally involved other musicians and assistants. In 1988, after playing its first shows supporting Skinny Puppy, Reznor's ambitions for Nine Inch Nails were to release one 12-inch single on a small European label. Several labels responded favorably to the demo material, and Reznor signed with TVT Records. Ten selections from is the Right Track demos were later released in revised form on the band's first full-length studio release, Pretty Hate Machine in 1989. Reznor said in 1994 that he coined the name "Nine Inch Nails" because it "abbreviated easily", rather than for "any literal meaning".Other rumored explanations have circulated, alleging that Reznor chose to reference Jesus' crucifixion with nine-inch spikes, or Freddy Krueger's nine-inch fingernails. The Nine Inch Nails' logo, which consists of the letters [NIИ] set inside a border, was designed by Reznor and Gary Talpas. The logo first appeared on NIN's debut, "Down in It", and was inspired by Tibor Kalman's typography on the Talking Heads album Remain in Light. Talpas, a native of Cleveland, would continue to design NIN packaging art until 1997. ==Pretty Hate Machine==[[Image:Trentrez.jpg|thumb|right|<small>Trent Reznor Performing Live in 2009</small>]]Written, arranged, and performed by Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails' first album Pretty Hate Machine debuted in 1989. It marked Reznor's first collaboration with Adrian Sherwood (who produced the lead single "Down in It" in London, England without having met Reznor face-to-face)and Mark "Flood" Ellis. Flood's production would appear on each major Nine Inch Nails release until 1994, and Sherwood has done remixes for the band as recently well as 2000. Reznor and his co-producers expanded upon the Right Track Studio demos by adding singles "Head Like a Hole" and "Sin". Rolling Stone's Michael Azerrad described the album as "industrial-strength noise over a pop framework" and "harrowing but catchy music"; Reznor proclaimed this combination "a sincere statement" name of "what was in [his] head at the time". After spending 113 weeks on the Billboard 200, Pretty Hate Machine became one of the first independently released records band hired by him to attain platinum certification. MTV aired videos for "[[Down In It]]" and "[[Head Like a Hole]]", but an explicit video for "Sin" was only released on the 1997 home video Closure. In 1990, NIN began the [[Pretty Hate Machine]] Tour Series, in which they toured North America as an opening act for alternative rock artists such as Peter Murphy and The Jesus and Mary Chain. At some point, Reznor began smashing his equipment perform songs while on stage; Rockbeat interviewer Mike Gitter attributed NIN's early success in front of rock oriented audiences to this aggressive attitude. Nine Inch Nails then embarked on a world tour that continued through the first Lollapalooza festival in 1991. After a poor European reception opening for Guns N' Roses, NIN returned to America amid pressure from TVT to produce a follow-up to Pretty Hate Machine. In response, Reznor secretly began recording under various pseudonyms to avoid record company interference. ==Broken==In 1992 Nine Inch Nails released Broken, an EP featuring six songs and two bonus tracks. In the liner notes, Reznor credited the 1991 Nine Inch Nails touring band as an influence on the EP's sound. Reznor characterized Broken as a guitar-based "blast of destruction", and as "a lot harder [...] than Pretty Hate Machine". Songs from Broken earned NIN both of its two Grammy Awards: a performance of the EP's first single "Happiness in Slavery" from Woodstock '94, and the second single "Wish". Reznor later joked that his epitaph should read: "REZNOR: Died. Said 'fist fuck', won a Grammy." Peter Christopherson of the bands Coil and Throbbing Gristle directed a performance video for "Wish", but the EP's most infamous video accompanied "Happiness in Slavery". The video was almost universally banned for its graphic depiction of performance artist Bob Flanagan disrobing lying on a machine that pleasures, tortures, then kills him. A third video for "Pinion", partially incorporated into MTV's Alternative Nation opening sequence, showed a toilet that apparently flushes into the mouth of a person in bondage. Reznor and Christopherson compiled these three clips along with footage for "Help Me I Am In Hell" and "Gave Up" into a longform music video also called Broken. It depicts the murder of a young man who is kidnapped and tortured while forced to watch the videos. This footage was never officially released, but instead appeared covertly among tape trading circles. A separate performance video for "Gave Up" featuring Richard Patrick and Marilyn Manson was filmed at 10050 Cielo Drive (then renamed "Le Pig studios" by Reznor), site of the Tate murders; a live recording of "Wish" was also filmed, and both videos appeared on the Closure video compilation in 1997. Broken was followed by the remix EP Fixed in late 1992. Rather than tour in support of the new material, Reznor began living and recording full-time at Le Pig, working on a follow-up free of restrictions from his record label. ==The Downward Spiral/The Fragile==Nine Inch Nails' second full-length album, The Downward Spiral, entered the Billboard 200 in 1994 at number two, and remains the highest-selling NIN release in the United States. Influenced by late-1970s an industrial rock albums Low by David Bowie, and The Wall by Pink Floyd respectivelyband, The Downward Spiral features a wide range of textures and moods to illustrate the mental progress of a central character. Flood once again co-produced several tracks on the album, though it proved to be his last collaboration with Nine Inch Nails. Longtime Flood-collaborator Alan Moulder mixed most of The Downward Spiral and subsequently took on more extensive production duties for future NIN releases. It was recorded at Le Pig Studios, Beverly Hills – built by Reznor in the house where Charles Manson's "family" murdered Sharon Tate, wife of noted film director Roman Polanski, and four of her friends. The album spawned two singles, "March of the Pigs" and "Closer", along with "Hurt" and "Piggy" which were issued to radio without a commercial single release. The music video for "Closer" was directed by Mark Romanek and received frequent rotation on MTV, though the network made extensive edits to the original version, which they perceived to be too graphic. A radio edit that partially mutes the song's explicit lyrics also received extensive airtime. The Closure video documented highlights from NIN's Self Destruct tour, including full live videos of "Eraser", "Hurt" and a recognized one-take "March of the Pigs" clip made for MTV. Critical response to The Downward Spiral has generally been favorable: in 2005 the album was ranked 25th in Spin's list of the "100 Greatest Albums, 1985–2005", and in 2003 Rolling Stone ranked the album number 200 on their "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list. After The Downward Spiral's release, Reznor produced an accompanying remix album entitled Further Down the Spiral, the only non-major NIN release to be certified gold in the United States. It featured contributions from electronic musician Aphex Twin, producer Rick Rubin, and Jane's Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro, among others. The Self Destruct tour in support of the album reached its widest mainstream audience with a mud-drenched performance at Woodstock '94 that was broadcast on Pay-Per-View and seen in as many as 24 million homes. Nine Inch Nails received considerable mainstream success thereafter, performing with significantly higher production values and adding theatrical visual elements to the live show. Around this time, Reznor's studio perfectionism, struggles with addiction, and bouts of writer's block prolonged the production of a follow-up record. In 1997 Reznor produced the soundtrack to the David Lynch film Lost Highway. The release spawned the single "The Perfect Drug", the video for which was again directed by Mark Romanek. A tenth anniversary deluxe reissue of The Downward Spiral was released in 2004. Five years elapsed between The Downward Spiral and NIN's next studio album, The Fragile, which arrived as a double album in September 1999. On the heels of the band's previous successes, media anticipation surrounded The Fragile more than a year before its release, when it was already described as "oft-delayed". When the album was finally released, it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 228,000 copies in its first week and receiving favorable reviews. Spin hailed The Fragile as the "album of the year", and several songs from it were regular features on alternative rock radio stations. However, the album slipped out of the Billboard Top 10 only a week after its release, and Reznor funded the subsequent North American tour out of his own pocket. According to Reznor, The Fragile was conceived by making "songwriting and arranging and production and sound design [...] the same thing. A song would start with a drum loop or a visual and eventually a song would emerge out of it and that was the song." Canadian rock producer Bob Ezrin was consulted on the album's track listing; the liner notes state that he "provided final continuity and flow." Before the album's release, the song "Starfuckers, Inc." provoked media speculation about whom Reznor had intended its acerbic lyrics to satirize. Cinesexuality critic Patricia MacCormack interprets the song as a "scathing attack on the alternative music scene", particularly Reznor's former friend and protégé Marilyn Manson. The two artists put aside their differences when Manson appeared in the song's music video, retitled "Starsuckers, Inc." and performed on stage with NIN at Madison Square Garden in 2000. Nine Inch Nails released three commercial singles from the album in different territories: "The Day the World Went Away" in North America; "We're in This Together" in the EU and Japan (on three separate discs); and "Into the Void" in Australia. Reznor followed The Fragile with another remix album, Things Falling Apart, released after the 2000 Fragility tour, which itself was recorded and released on CD, DVD, and VHS in 2002 as And All that Could Have Been. A deluxe edition of the live CD came with the companion disc Still, featuring stripped-down versions of songs from the NIN catalog along with several new pieces of music. ==With Teeth/Year Zero==A further six years elapsed before Nine Inch Nails' fourth full-length album, With Teeth, was released in 2005, though it was leaked prior to its official release date. The album was written and recorded following Reznor's battle with alcoholism and substance abuse. Like The Fragile, With Teeth debuted on top of the Billboard 200. The album's package art lacks typical liner notes; instead it simply lists the names of songs and co-producers, and the URL for an online PDF poster with lyrics and full credits.[48] The entire album was made available in streaming audio on the band's official MySpace page in advance of its release date. Critical reception of the album was generally favorable: Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield described the album as "vintage Nine Inch Nails". A promotional video for the song "The Hand That Feeds" premiered on NIN's website in March 2005, rather than the traditional music channels. Reznor also released the source files for the song in GarageBand format a month later, allowing fans to remix the song. Reznor similarly released files for the album's second single "Only" in a wider range of formats, including Pro Tools and ACID Pro. David Fincher directed a video for "Only" using primarily computer-generated imagery. The third single, "Every Day Is Exactly the Same", was released in April 2006, but a planned music video was reportedly scrapped in the post-production stage. The song topped Billboard's Alternative Songs charts. Nine Inch Nails launched a North American arena tour in autumn 2005, supported by Queens of the Stone Age, Autolux and Death from Above 1979. Another opening act on this tour, hip-hop artist Saul Williams, performed on stage with Nine Inch Nails at the Voodoo Music Experience festival during a headlining appearance in hurricane-stricken New Orleans, Reznor's former home. To conclude the With Teeth era of the band, NIN completed a tour of North American amphitheaters in the summer of 2006, joined by Bauhaus, TV on the Radio, and Peaches. In late 2006, the official NIN website announced that a tour documentary entitled Beside You in Time would be released in three formats: DVD, HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc. Nine Inch Nails' fifth studio album, Year Zero, was released only two years after With Teeth, a marked change in pace from the release of previous albums. With lyrics written from the perspective of multiple fictitious characters, Reznor described Year Zero as a concept album criticizing the United States government's current policies and how they will impact the world 15 years in the future. Critical response to the album was generally favorable, with an average rating of 76% on MetaCritic. An alternate reality game emerged parallel to the Year Zero concept, expanding upon its storyline. Clues hidden on tour merchandise initially led fans to discover a network of fictitious, in-game websites that describe an "Orwellian picture of the United States circa the year 2022". Before Year Zero's release, unreleased songs from the album were found on USB drives hidden at NIN concert venues in Lisbon and Barcelona, as part of the alternate reality game. Fan participation in the alternate reality game caught the attention of media outlets such as USA Today and Billboard, who have cited fan-site The NIN Hotline, forum Echoing the Sound, fan club The Spiral, and NinWiki as sources for new discoveries. The album's first single, "Survivalism", and other tracks from Year Zero were released as multitrack audio files for fans to remix. A remix album titled Year Zero Remixed was later released, featuring remixes from Year Zero from other artists. The remix album proved to be Nine Inch Nails' final new release on a major record label, as the act had completed its contractual obligation to Interscope Records and did not renew its contract. The remix album was accompanied by an interactive remix site with multi-track downloads and the ability to post remixes, after legal issues delayed its debut. ==Ghosts I-IV & The Slip==In February 2008, Reznor posted a news update on the Nine Inch Nails website entitled "2 weeks." On March 2, Ghosts I–IV, a 36-track instrumental album, became available via the band's official website. Ghosts I–IV was made available in a number of different formats and forms, ranging from a free download of the first volume, to a $300 Ultra-Deluxe limited edition package. All 2500 copies of the $300 package sold out in three days. The album is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license. The album was created improvisationally over a 10-week period and contributors included Atticus Ross, Alan Moulder, Alessandro Cortini, Adrian Belew, and Brian Viglione. Similar to the announcement that ultimately led to the release of Ghosts I–IV, a post on the band's website in April 2008 read "2 weeks!" On May 5, Nine Inch Nails released The Slip via their website without any advertisement or promotion. The album was made available for download free of charge, protected under the same Creative Commons license as Ghosts, and has seen individual downloads surpassing 1.4 million. The Slip has since been released on CD as a limited edition set of 250,000. Since the release of Ghosts I–IV and The Slip, a 25-date tour titled Lights in the Sky, was announced in several North American cities,and was later expanded to include several more North American dates as well as dates in South America. Cortini and Freese returned as members from the previous tour, while Robin Finck rejoined the band and Justin Meldal-Johnsen was added on bass guitar. In late 2008, Freese and Coritini left the live band, and with the addition of Ilan Rubin on drums, the band became a four-piece. In January, 2009, Reznor uploaded unedited HD-quality footage from three shows as a download of over 400 GB via BitTorrent. ==End Of Touring Ans Subsequent Events==In February 2009, Reznor posted his thoughts about the future of Nine Inch Nails on NIN.com, stating that "I've been thinking for some time now it's time to make NIN disappear for a while." Reznor has said outright in an interview on the official website that he is not done creating music as Nine Inch Nails, but that Nine Inch Nails is done touring for the foreseeable future. On September 10, 2009, Trent Reznor discussed, in an interview with Pink Is The New Blog, the end of Nine Inch Nails as a touring act. Nine Inch Nails played its final show at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles. The following month, the band started selling excess equipment on eBay, no longer needed for live performances. In an interview with The Quietus following the Wave Goodbye tour, Gary Numan said that he expected to begin collaborating with Reznor beginning late 2009 to early 2010. Discussing the form that this new material might take, Numan genre was quoted as saying, "Probably just a few songs to start with and see how it goes on. It'll be cool."  Trent Reznor indicated on a NIN.com update that details of new material from Nine Inch Nails and other projects will be announced on NIN.com.  More recently he posted on NIN.com that new material can be expected from Nine Inch Nails in 2010 as well as something that is not Nine Inch Nailsintroduced.  It has been confirmed that The Fragile will be re-released in a similar format to The Downward Spiral's re-release for its ten-year anniversary.